


pursuit of eden

by cruxifiction (vampirecaligula)



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst, M/M, Soulmates, Tales of Asteria, not actually but its the same goddamn thing and i hate myself for it, sources: dude trust me, that gay shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-09 05:05:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11097501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampirecaligula/pseuds/cruxifiction
Summary: The young man turns abruptly and their eyes meet again. Zelos’s heart lurches as the young man takes him in, brow furrowing ever so slightly, but otherwise without a hint of recognition. He isn’t certain why that hurts as much as it does.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [me and ash have been screaming in dms abt...](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/296115) by Ning. 



> i have no idea what tales of asteria is so this is a fake asteria fic where everything is made up and the canon doesn't matter
> 
> maybe 5 chapters eventually, we'll see
> 
> in honor of 6/10 week!!

Zelos doesn’t walk so much as he does slide through the streets of Meltokio in the rain, water melting from his oiled cloak only to soak through his shoes. This pair is ruined, but it’s good riddance anyway since they provide no purchase on the slick stones and threaten to topple him with each precarious step. Despite, or perhaps because of, the forbidding nature of the afternoon sky, the citizens scurry home and he keeps on his toes to avoid embarrassing collisions. Everywhere he’s assaulted by the stench of soaked wool, and the humid air threatens to choke him. Even so only one thought echoes in his head:

 _Colette_.

The heavy amulet thudding against his thigh with every step is supposed to go to her, and he’s running out of time. He focuses on shoving past citizens and lets his subconscious work on the plan. Zelos has always been best at _act now, think later_ , and surely he’ll have figured out a solution by the time he reaches her hiding place.

The streetlight’s pole is hidden but its orb hovers above the crowd like the sun, marking the corner that is Zelos’s next turn. He rounds the corner without really thinking about it, people and animals and carts and rain, rain, rain all pouring by in a mess of smelly gray. He shoves a wet strand of hair behind his ear, grimacing when it’s warm instead of cool.

Briefly the crowd parts and Zelos finds himself on a collision course with a young man wrapped in a red coat, bright material lined in silver buttons that catch the streetlight. He walks with a focus that rivals Zelos’s own, hands curled into loose fists and gaze set straight ahead. A white scarf obscures the lower half of his face, revealing only a set of intense brown eyes that shine with laughter and sunlight as golden as his complexion. In Zelos’s mind’s eye they match a smile that is wide and slightly crooked, skin tinted the brown of earth, the scent of pine needles, the twang of spiced curry on the edge of his tongue and warm nights with an ocean breeze—

Zelos blinks and it’s gone.

 _He’s_ gone.

The crowd is as endless as before and rain roars in his ears. Zelos skips a step just as his heart skips a beat; an ache lingers, brushing against his heartstrings in a way that makes him choke. _What the hell was_ that _?_

Zelos swallows and tries to calm his heart. “Shut up,” he mutters to himself. “You’re imagining shit. It’s what you get for going this long without a good roll in the sheets.”

But he cannot shake the feeling that he and that young man had met somewhere before, long ago.

An ex. Maybe a one-night stand. Gods all know he’s had enough of those—

—but he’s never remembered their _scent_ before.

_You’re imagining this. It didn’t happen._

Zelos knows better than to believe his own inner monologue. He’s not entirely sure why he does, but he turns on his heel and sure enough, the same young man in the red coat and white scarf is still there.

Zelos catches him in only a few strides, steadily reaching out without recognizing he’s done so until his gloved hand catches the other’s arm. “Hey!” he says, loudly, so as to be heared over the rain. “Hey, listen—!”

The young man turns abruptly and their eyes meet again. Zelos’s heart lurches as the young man takes him in, brow furrowing ever so slightly, but otherwise without a hint of recognition. He isn’t certain why that hurts as much as it does.

“Can I help you?” Zelos’s captive demands, slightly muffled through the cloth, and shakes off his arm. “I’m kinda in a hurry, you know.”

The tone is harsh; for some reason, Zelos is surprised. There’s something in the back of his head screaming that this is entirely, completely wrong. He’s not supposed to sound that way, act that way. Zelos has the sudden inclination to cower, but swallows it.

“Nah, no, I just—”

Zelos tries to think of a way to explain _I saw you and had a million flashbacks that I don’t fully understand and I think I know what your tongue tastes like and how you like your coffee and how much stupider your hair looks in the morning_ without sounding completely insane.

There is, sadly, no way.

“—Have we met?” he settles.

The young man’s brow furrows deeper. Zelos imagines that his lower lip is trembling with concentration, though of course he can’t see if that’s the case.

Around them the crowd continues move in a steady stream of people, but to Zelos, no one exists but the man in the red coat and the heavy beating of his own heart.

“No,” says the young man, and Zelos feels as if his stomach has been ripped out. “Of course not. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense that Zelos can’t think of a worse thing to say, any more that it makes sense that they _would_ have met. There’s no reason for them to know each other. Zelos can’t even bring a semblance of the man’s name to his lips: does it start with an S, or a G, or something in between? Why should he have expected any other answer?

 _You’re projecting_ , Zelos tells himself harshly. _You’re tired and messed up and projecting, and you just humiliated yourself. Congratulations._

Zelos snaps himself out of it and tries to salvage the situation with a toss of his head and a grin. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “What was I thinking? Must’ve confused ya for someone else.”

His façade is perfect. The smile is at exactly the right angle; his limbs perfectly assume a carefree posture; the cadence of his voice is playful and light.

But the young man doesn’t look any less solemn. There is a long, awkward silence where neither of them speaks, and Zelos feels as if the young man’s eyes are digging straight into his soul.

“I’m sorry,” the young man finally mumbles, before turning and continuing on his way, head ducked low.

Zelos feels as if he has taken a piece of his heart with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow an update???

Zelos does not think of a way to get rid of the amulet before he finds himself back where he started. He is too distracted.

The house Colette lurks in is small and ramshackle, but dry enough. The ceilings are so low that Zelos has to stoop to pass through doors, which he loathes, but no one’s ever listened to him on matters like this.

(He’s not sure how he knows that with such certainty, but the feeling he gets when people _don’t_ listen to him is so familiar that he imagines he’s experienced it often.)

The door creaks when he opens it into a dark, gaping hallway. An ancient gaslight, mostly unused, hangs loose on the left wall. Softly he murmurs _fireball_ ; a small, but strong flame forms in his hand, then hovers to the gaslight. The wick sputters, but catches, providing a dim glimpse of a door at the end of the hall. The floorboards creak and crack like they’ll give under his weight. Zelos keeps on his toes, though it won’t make much of a difference.

The door leads to an anteroom containing only a hearth with a low-burning fire, a small cauldron, and an assortment of cooking tools spread across a tiny table. Mikleo is bent over the hearth and cauldron, his pale skin glowing orange as it reflects the flames.

“Anything interesting?” Zelos asks.

Mikleo grimaces. “Stew,” he replies. Fourth time this week.

In the next room, Colette is curled on a wooden chair out of view of the window. Despite the area being a good five degrees cooler with Mikleo present, her hair is slightly frizzy from the humidity, and she’s shed the outer layer of her robes in favor of the light shift underneath. She has a glass of water clutched between thin fingers, and she’s frowning in deep concentration at the flooded alleyway just outside.

Zelos gently shuts the door behind him. He reaches into his pocket. The chain rattles as it slides onto the table, followed by the dull _thud_ of the amulet. “Got it,” Zelos mutters. “Chain of Eden, as requested.”

Colette sits up when she hears him enter, and then her eyes widen as she sees the object shining in the lamplight. “Oh, thank you!” she says earnestly, because Colette has never done an insincere thing in her life. “I hope it wasn’t too hard to get. You’re not hurt, are you?”

The bruises on Zelos’s ribcage will heal. Nothing’s broken. He stretches his arms out before and above him and arcs backward—half actually stretching, half showing off his fantastic musculature. “Like I said,” he drawls, “you’ve got _nothin’_ to worry about. I can handle whatever shite the universe throws at me.”

Colette smiles, but it has a twinge of melancholy to it. “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

She does that, sometimes—Zelos isn’t totally sure what happened to him before that Colette looks at him sadly or speaks far more gently than he deserves. He’s even less sure about why he really, _really_ doesn’t want to know.

“You didn’t run into anyone on the way either, did you?”

Zelos doesn’t tell her about the young man. He simply relates the story of breaking into the exsphere archives of Meltokio, undetected and unmatched, retrieving the amulet, and making his way back to Colette.

“What is it, anyway?” he asks. “Why’re you and those bodybuilders you’re fighting so obsessed with this little trinket?”

He picks up the amulet again, letting the chain run through his gloved fingers and watching the light glance off the brass. It’s plain and feels hollow but has no latch, and, frankly, is rather ugly—the curling motif doesn’t match on either side and the links are poorly formed. It might’ve barely made five gald at the pawn shop he was searching for.

He realizes it’s supposed to hold a gem—red jasper, maybe. He turns the amulet over and over, looking for a hidden catch or a grove where such a thing could be placed, but to no avail. There’s no way something this cheap could support a stone; what was he thinking? Where’d that thought even come from?

Colette answered without hesitation. “We think it can hold things,” she replies. “Things that you can’t usually hold—like thoughts, feelings, memories—”

Zelos glanced up, meeting Colette’s blue eyes with his own and holding her gaze. “Memories?”

Colette turned a little pink. “That’s, um, that’s where me and Velvet aren’t getting along as much. I think that if we did it right, we could use the amulet to restore everyone’s memories, and when everyone remembers how they’re _supposed_ to interact with each other we won’t be fighting as much.”

“And Velvet doesn’t believe that.”

Colette bites her lower lip. It’s very cute, but it’s tainted by the pain of her distress. “Velvet wants a more extreme solution.”

Her words hang in the air, trapped by the humidity and Zelos’s own realization that he’d almost let them walk right into Velvet’s hands.

Up to this point, Zelos hadn’t particularly cared who among these factions succeeded. He was tired of fighting, and was willing to help whoever looked like they were getting shit done fastest: he’d planned to pawn off the amulet and throw Colette’s last hope out the window with it, forcing her into Velvet’s company.

But that had been before he’d run into that guy on the street. The one who was so foreign to him, and yet simultaneously so familiar.

A rapid knock at the door from Mikleo. “Stew’s ready,” he says, voice muffled through the wood.

“In a minute,” Zelos calls back. Then, to Colette he asks, “So what’s our next step?”

“There’s a well somewhere to the north, in a garden that no one’s found for centuries,” she says. “It’s… well, it’s a legend.”

Zelos crosses his arms. The amulet still dangles from his fingers. “So it doesn’t exist.”

Colette gives him a sheepish smile.

Zelos sighs. “Great.”

“Mikleo did find it!” she says. “Or at least—he found where it’s _supposed_ to be. He’s made maps and everything. All we have to do to make this work is give the amulet to the spirit inside the well and ask them to fix everything for us.”

“You think that’ll work?”

“I think it’s our best shot.”

A road trip to a legendary well with a legendary spirit wasn’t how Zelos had wanted to spend his weekend, but the face of that young man flickered again in his mind.

“Swell,” he says. “I’ll get Mickey to give me the map.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have an informant who tells me shit about tales of asteria without me having to play it

Mikleo’s map is fucking ancient. Its edges are so fragile Zelos is worried they’ll crumble to dust in his fingers; the ink is faded; the handwriting barely legible. Fortunately, he already wears gloves—the murderous glare Mikleo shoots him when he insists that Zelos _never ever handle this with bare skin ever the oils will cause oxidative stress which damage the parchment etc etc yadda yadda_ is enough to swear him off treasure hunts for the rest of his life. Fucking archaeologists. He doesn’t see the appeal.

“The garden’s here, north of Luin,” Mikleo explains, pointing to the appropriate spot on the map and then to the same place on a more modern copy. The area in both maps indicates a mountain range wrapping around the south and east, a huge lake in the center, and then what appears to be forestry around that. He then moves his finger to a smaller area, which he’s circled on the modern copy in red ink and on the ancient copy is denoted in Ancient Tethe’allan—a language predating even Spiritua’s letters. Zelos has had to pull at least three or four linguistics books since Mikleo decided to learn it. “It’s _probably_ near Lake Umacy in Sylvarant. I can’t say for sure.”

Zelos isn’t sure where Mikleo is from. Colette kind of just found him one day wandering around outside of Meltokio, overheated and miserable and muttering about malevolence. He’s sworn he isn’t an elf, or even half, but there is something about the delicacy of his movement and the breadth of his knowledge that makes him far more than human. Colette doesn’t want to question it and has told him not to ask, but Zelos has got a strong feeling he already knows. You don’t hang out with angels for the better part of your lifespan and not learn how to recognize them.

“You and Colette sure love your _probablies_ and _maybies_ ,” Zelos notes as Mikleo carefully rolls up the maps and stores them away.

Mikleo shrugs. “We can learn a lot about what the ancients thought was true,” he says. “Everything else we make up.” 

* * *

Zelos takes the rest of the day to pack a bag—mostly with food and straight-up gald; Sylvarant still hasn’t got a functioning economy even after the Tethe’allan relief efforts—and sleep. He functions better at night than he does during the day, so at around six o’clock that night he kisses Colette on the cheek and winks at Mikleo to say fare-thee-well, suckers, and tries to think of how he’s going to fake giving the amulet to a spirit.

Maybe he just hitches a ride to Hima—the bars are supposed to be great there, filled with husky adventurers and seventy-percent alcohols—and comes back a week later and says he couldn’t find it. Maybe he just ditches them altogether and goes back to Velvet, like he was going to do in the first place. He could still pawn off the amulet; the likelihood of Colette finding such a plain piece is slim.

She’d probably have Mikleo do it, though, he remembers. And Mikleo, fucking research history nerd, can find anything.

The rain’s let up now and the sun’s peeking from behind the clouds, though moisture still hangs heavy in the air. Meltokio’s inner-city silhouette isn’t too hard on the eyes, but when Zelos looks at it he feels no attachment. His hand sneaks into his pocket by habit and brushes against the amulet, and suddenly he remembers.

_“I’m not nervous.”_

_golden light white columns golden sand—the sky, the most brilliant turquoise Zelos has ever seen, and_

_brown skin with callused fingers brushing against his face, the sweetest softest smile with laughter in the corners and slight five o’clock shadow peppering the jaw_

_"Hey, you’ll do great,” Zelos hears himself say._

_he sees uncertainty and fear melting into sudden confidence, relief, warmth, like homemade bread on a cold, lazy day_

_then a wink. “Put on a show that’ll make me fall in love.”_

* * *

Zelos isn’t attached to this world or anything else in it, really. He sees his name and face plastered on the walls and knows he’s someone famous, but when the Chosen woke up one morning with a panic attack and a shot memory not a single bastard crawled out of the cracks to give him a hand. His butler, Sebastian, has told him a lot—but not enough to invoke a visceral reaction. The few memories Zelos has aren’t of friends and saving the world, they’re of wings that burn and bacchanalias on the beach, and even if someone _did_ want Zelos the Chosen back he’s not sure he wants to go.

When Velvet told him about the plan to create Jildia, Zelos was on board. _Fuck this place_ , he thought to himself, thinking about Meltokio’s conservative values and Sylvarant’s backwater hillbillies. A new start sounded fantastic.

Then he met Colette.

Colette’s told him a little bit more about where they came from. She’s a Chosen too; like him, born for a cause and a fight that they have no stake in. Colette is dedicated. Zelos is disillusioned. They work well together.

She tells tall tales about summoning spirits and fighting angels (angels, Zelos remembers, even if all he remembers is writhing in pain as the wings grow from his back) and concentration camps full of half-elves. She talks about people named Genis and Raine and Sheena and Regal, and more names Zelos can’t ever remember, but she doesn’t talk about someone named Lloyd.

Sometimes the name pops up, but Colette skirts around it. You can tell because her voice trails off and she dips into sudden, rare melancholy, and she whispers the name _Lloyd_ like he’s her dead lover. That’s probably what he is. Zelos is an asshole, but he’s not enough of an asshole to ask.

For some reason the flashback brings the name to Zelos’s mind, and if he says he’s sure he didn’t flirt with Colette’s boyfriend then he’s a fucking liar.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am literally making this up as i go along and it's wild
> 
> this is not going to be five chapters

He notices he’s being followed somewhere between Iselia and Hima. Not overtly; if he wasn’t looking he wouldn’t be able to tell; but he has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach from the moment he steps outside the walls of Meltokio and it only becomes worse as time goes on.

Surreptitiously, he pays attention to the passengers on the ships and in automobiles, to civilians strolling through city streets and farmers languishing in the fields. He searches for shared features—a body type, a clothing style, a particularly distinct weapon—but whoever’s following him is good enough to duck into the crowd or at least to change disguises, and all Zelos has going for him is the feeling of eyes boring holes in the back of his neck.

The amulet is useless here. All it gives him are memories of the same boy over and over again; they keep him awake at night, wondering.

He arrives in Hima four days after he sets out: a day to cross the water, another to skirt Latheon Gorge, one more to pass north of the Toize Valley Mine, and the last to bring him into Sylvarant. As his journey progresses the cities become fewer and farther between, and technology steadily disappears until the villages are literally one-horse towns that have running water if they’re _lucky_.

Zelos generally loathes Sylvarant. The people here are starving and tired, still recovering from the Desian oppression that ran Sylvarant dry for so many centuries, and they’re suspicious of Zelos’s fine clothing and foreign accent and purse lined with gald. It’s a good thing Zelos can take care of himself, because the backwater Sylvarantis are on the whole bigger than he is and somehow even more hateful.

In Hima he purchases a more accurate map—or at least what he’s told is one. He scours the lot of them and compares them to Mikleo’s written directions to make sure they make sense, but he’s no cartographer and if a local wants to fuck him over Zelos knows it’s going to happen. It’d be better if he could hire someone as a guide, but there aren’t too many adventurers here who care to give him the time of day.

Zelos bribes the shopkeeper to make sure he’s getting a good enough deal and then leaves, stepping back out onto the cliffside.

Even if Zelos hates Hima, he has to admit it’s an incredible city. Built into the cliffside, each road has a drop that goes for miles and a strong wind that threatens to push over anyone who can’t keep their ground. Each building is rickety and creaks in the sudden gusts, as if the whole place is about to tumble into the ravine—and yet it’s remained here for centuries, a center of trade and gossip for all of northern Sylvarant, and relatively free from Desian fists. Not much grows here, and not much lives; the people who inhabit Hima are bold and outspoken and let you know when you’re unwelcome, and Zelos has to admit that that’s a fine enough change from the false niceties of Meltokio.

The nature of the construction is such that the shop he’s in opens onto the roof of a store below it; when Zelos exits, he’s treated to a view of the ravine surrounding Hima and the forests beyond it, the greenery fading into black and blue in the distance until finally, at the very edge, the faintest glimmer of the ocean can be seen. In Hima, it’s easy to feel small.

A sharp blur of white flashes in Zelos’s peripheral vision for only an instant. The next thing he knows is his legs giving way beneath him and the roof falling away, the cracks in the ground approaching too fast. Instinct causes a surge of focus to his upper back. The area below his scapulae burns so badly he nearly sees red, but his sudden crash slows, his head jerks, and the pain gives way to the heat of wings that let him sail to safety below.

Zelos lands and staggers to his feet, the wings gathering behind him as a hazy golden aura. In one motion he turns on his heel and leans back to get a glimpse of what knocked him down. His breathing is haggard, the wind knocked out of him, and the next few seconds feel more like an eternity.

It’s him.

_Lloyd._

He crouches on the roof—now in a white coat that only superficially resembles the red, his brown skin obscured by the shadows of cliffs and steep mountain passes in the Hima skyline. It’s difficult to see anything more detailed than that, but Zelos can tell by the muss of his hair and hell, by the sheer force of impact that it can’t be anyone else. Behind him the sun sets a brilliant orange, the warm glow a lion’s mane around Lloyd’s silhouette, and Zelos’s breath catches in his throat.

Without warning Lloyd springs from the roof. He’s already rolled and at his knees by the time Zelos remembers what the fuck’s going on. Zelos draws his blade just in time for it to clash with Lloyd’s and the force of impact travels down his wrist and into his shoulder.

“You’re slow today,” Lloyd comments, almost as an afterthought, and kicks Zelos in the gut.

Zelos staggers back a few steps, but smoothly ducks to avoid another kick. He grabs Lloyd’s ankle in one swift motion and uses his weight to pull, knocking Lloyd onto his back. “We’ve never fought before, dumbass,” he retorts as Lloyd yelps in surprise.

“I still thought you’d be faster!”

Lloyd leaps to his feet. He swings his sword but Zelos grabs his wrist and is surprised when the blade drops clean out of Lloyd’s hand, thudding on the ground. He doesn’t have time to think about it before a fist flies in his face.

At the last second Zelos ducks again and is met with Lloyd’s knee in his chest. This time Zelos drags him down with him, slamming them both into the hard stone and turning the world sideways. Lloyd rolls away when Zelos’s grip loosens. Zelos jumps up, adjusts the handle of his blade, and crouches in anticipation of the next attack.

Despite his stellar tracking skills, Lloyd hasn’t got a subtle bone in his body. He’s obtained a second sword from somewhere and rushes Zelos headfirst with a snarl on his face and the cavalier attitude of a berserker. He’s far away enough that Zelos has time—time to start murmuring an incantation with words remembered by habit alone. They are hasty; he stumbles over the pronunciation, struggling to get them out faster than Lloyd can run.

At the last second, Zelos runs out of time—Lloyd is two feet away and raising his sword and he has to make a move. Zelos raises his blade to parry—

—and a blade of lightning shoots out of the sky, striking Lloyd faster than Zelos can think. It is so close that Zelos’s skin tingles from the charge differential in the air; he smells the stench of singed cloth. Lloyd’s attack falls short, and he staggers in his tracks.

The lightning disappears as quickly as it comes, but it leaves Lloyd winded. Zelos knocks the sword from his hand and snatches his collar, dragging him close enough to see the whites of his eyes.

Lloyd’s gaze is full of righteous anger and brilliant passion; he glares at Zelos with defiance despite just having taken a few million volts to his system. There’s a conviction in his attitude, even unspoken, that leaves Zelos with a lurch in his heart and the knowledge that there’s no way in hell Lloyd would do anything without having a good goddamn reason.

Zelos doesn’t control what he says.

“You got thirty seconds,” he grunts, “to tell me why I shouldn’t shove my blade up your ass.”

Lloyd exhales sharply through his nose and takes five of them to think. Then he says, “It’s about Colette.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was talking to ruxi earlier and i was like "what do i do with this chapter" and she was like "idk gay flashback" and thats what i did

Zelos tightens his grip around Lloyd’s collar and meets the passionate glare that lights up his brown eyes. _Colette_ is what brings him back to his senses.

“What about her?” he demands.

“She’s wrong,” Lloyd insists. “About that amulet, the one you’re carrying. It’s not gonna do what you think it’ll do, and—”

How _dare he?_  

Zelos doesn’t give a damn about whether Colette’s wrong or right. What he sees, right now, is someone who she cares for, who she worries about _deeply_ , not bothering to give her the time of day. She’s done too much for him to let Lloyd get away with this, and hell if she hasn’t probably done more for Lloyd.

Zelos tosses Lloyd back to the ground in a flash of rage and guards again. Not expecting the sudden release, Lloyd staggers then tugs at the red scarf around his neck. It fell below his chin in the fight, revealing tawny skin and a dark five o’clock shadow. For a moment Zelos indulges in examining the curve of his jaw, the nape of his neck, forgetting the people of Hima that still wander around them.

Lloyd holds out a gloved hand. “Look, I don’t wanna fight you!”

“No one said that was _mutual_ , baby,” Zelos spits. “You decided you wanted a fight the day you abandoned Colette!”

“I didn’t abandon her!”

“Try telling her that!”

It rings somewhat hollow to defend Colette’s honor like this, given that Zelos has been moments away from tossing the amulet off a cliff and disappearing into the aether since he began this journey, but she has always been kind to him, and she deserves far better than to have her desperate maneuvers made useless by a man she thought she loved.

Zelos lunges forward with the intention to kill stronger than instinct, but something feels wrong and sick and hollow in the pit of his stomach. Instead of jumping backward like Zelos might have Lloyd charges forward, ducking beneath the swing of his blade and slamming into Zelos with his shoulder. They both fall faster than Zelos can breathe, and the turquoise of Hima’s sky fades into

_deep shadows hovering at the edge of the gold brocade ceiling flickering at the edge like candlelight and down below, a cheerful reel from the violins weaves with the scent of wine and perfume_

_and from this vantage point Zelos sees a bright yellow dance floor and twirling skirts in every color of the rainbow on men and women and everyone in between, a mess of hues and drunken laughter_

_and beside him silk rustles softly as Lloyd leans next to him, the light from a single gaslamp above the balcony door glancing off his white coat in neons and pastels_

_and it’s_ intoxicating _to have him stand so close to breathe his scent of sweat and cardamom and maybe that’s not the most romantic thing, but Zelos is tired of being romantic anyway._

_“You sure look at home in those clothes,” Lloyd says, a cheeky grin tugging at his lips._

_Zelos pretends that the compliment doesn’t send a thrill down his spine. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, hun.”_

_Lloyd punches his shoulder playfully. “Hey, I’m not jealous!”_

_“Calm down, you look great.” Zelos reaches over and brushes a gloved thumb against Lloyd’s jaw, and he lets it linger just below his ear._

_Lloyd is taken by surprise. “… Really?”_

_“Yeah, you clean up good.”_

_Lloyd’s cheeks darken as he blushes and grins with embarrassment. Softly, he takes Zelos’s hand and presses his lips to his knuckles. “What are you doing up here, anyway?” Lloyd murmurs. “Took me forever to find you.”_

_Zelos sighs and pulls his hand away, shifting his gaze back to the multitude of partygoers. He gets lost in their twirls and clinking glasses, so that it is a surprise to him when Lloyd says his name._

_"Zelos, are you alright?”_

_Zelos takes a deep breath. “It’s tiring, sometimes,” he says. “Not being serious.”_

_“What?”_

_“It’s nothing.”_

Zelos is trembling when he remembers none of that is real. The hard earth of Hima beneath him, the dusky sky, the ache in his tailbone and at the back of his head from falling—those are real, harsh, _sharp_. They are still weaker than his profound sense of loss. He can't pretend any longer that the random flashes are wishful thinking or contextless memories, anymore than he can pretend that he truly wants to give up on Colette. He may barely recall his past life, and barely care—but there is no doubt in his mind that Lloyd was a crucial part of it.

Why, then, did Colette never speak candidly of him?

Lloyd is straddled atop him still, the silhouette of his head dark against the sky. His lower lip quivers slightly and for the first time, there is a visible slip in Lloyd’s resolve. His eyes are wide and shaken, as if he’s seen a ghost. Their eyes meet, and before Zelos can wonder—crazily—if they saw the same damn thing, he looks away.

Lloyd scrambles back onto his heels and gives Zelos his space. Around them, the people of Hima continue about their business. In a city of adventurers, this must be normal.

They sit there for a while, neither ready to pick up his sword. The tension in the air is palpable though as Zelos closely monitors Lloyd’s movements and the placement of his blades, as Lloyd keeps a watchful eye on Zelos’s right hand.

Zelos is hesitant to ask. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to.

“Did you…?” Lloyd begins. Then he scratches his head, grimacing a little, and Zelos can’t remember ever having seen this gesture before but gods all _damn_ if it doesn’t look familiar. “Y’know—”

“Yeah,” Zelos breathes. “I saw it, too.”

Another moment of tense silence. Somewhere over the cliffside a dragon shrieks, behind them a cart rattles, and vendors close up shop for the night, but Lloyd and Zelos remain frozen on the ground and locked in each other’s eyes.

“What the _hell_ ,” Lloyd demands, but Zelos cuts him off.

“You still think that amulet doesn’t work?” he says.

“Fuck, I don’t know…” he trails off. Then he heaves a sigh, his shoulders shrugging up and down and letting the scarf fall looser around his neck. “Honestly, I think we oughta do some catching up.”

"Yeah," Zelos agrees. "Think we oughta."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i spent so much time this weekend trying to figure out what the sst4 gene does and i can’t take it anymore, have this instead

The interior of the inn is thick with the stench of smoke and strangers, all gathering under one roof as the darkness threatened them overhead. In Meltokio the proliferation of light held Shadow’s domain at bay, and like Zelos, most of the population lives in a twenty-four hour cycle where the purity of the sunlit hours gave way for the depravity of the witching hour. But in Sylvarant the night swallows the world whole, less a natural phenomenon than an omniscient being all to itself. The general anxiety that holds all Sylvarantis in the wake of world reunification rises to a palpable amount as the sun finally kissed the mountains good-bye, and Zelos longs for someone to throw a gods-all-damned party to relieve some of the tension.

It doesn’t seem to bother Lloyd.

Lloyd follows Zelos to the stairway at the back of the inn and continues as they go upstairs, his boots heavy on the creaky wood. Despite the duel, despite the hallucinations, Lloyd’s breathing is easy and even and has a rhythm Zelos quickly grows comfortable with. With him at his back, as they ascend into the darkness of the upstairs hall, Zelos has the uncanny feeling that it does not matter if they say anything in the next few hours at all. Lloyd will understand just the same.

Zelos opens the door to his room—pathetically small, even for Sylvarant; it’s perhaps ten feet both ways and contains only a bed and a short sidetable with a tiny chair—and gestures to… all of it.

“Sit where you want, I guess,” Zelos says. “It’s pretty much the humblest of abodes.”

Lloyd gingerly sits in the chair, which he is far too bulky for: his shoulders stretch from the wall almost to the bed, and his knees splay awkwardly to either side. Zelos swallows the laugh that bubbles up in his throat. He leans against the wall, arms crossed, and tries to think of what to say next.

Lloyd, too, is silent, tapping his fingers on his knee with an irregular rhythm. Zelos’s heart beats a little louder as he fails to think of anything.

Finally it’s Lloyd who speaks, first taking a deep breath, then filling the room with his voice. “So. Colette found you first, huh?”

Zelos grimaces. “Found’s not exactly the right word.”

“What d’you mean?”

“It’s not like I was hiding.”

“Not like _that,_ like…” Lloyd purses his lips and furrows his brow. He opens his mouth as if to speak, and then he doesn’t; he puts a hand over his jaw and then removes it.

Zelos quirks a grin. “Like what? Like I was lost?” he offers.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I wasn’t lost, I actually…” He’d _run into_ Colette purely by accident, in a market in the outskirts of the city. Her eyes had lightened and a smile broke out onto her face as she called his name and embraced him without reserve, but it had taken longer for him to come around to the tall tales she told. “ _She_ was lost. I helped her find the way back to her place, and I just kept helping her after that. I’m still not all that sure I understand what the point of this mission is, but it seems pretty damn important, and she’s a good kid.”

“She seems like it,” Lloyd says softly, with the same inflection that Colette often has when describing _him_.

Zelos clears his throat. “How ‘bout you? How’d a couple as pretty as you and Colette end up separated?”

Far from subtle; not his best work. Zelos hopes to hear _we weren’t a couple_ or _it’s not like that_ or even _what are you talking about?_ but Lloyd pulls through on none of them.

“I don’t know,” Lloyd says, helpfully. “I woke up and Velvet was already there. And she and her friends explained what was going on, about their leader’s plan to create Jildia—all of what they’re doing makes sense. They don’t want to hurt anyone, they just want to go home.”

“And you just _believed_ them?” Zelos scoffs.

“Well—yeah!”

“You didn’t even _question_ it?”

“You didn’t question Colette!”

“I spent _weeks_ questioning her; hell, I wasn’t even about to help her three days ago!”

“I just—” Lloyd’s knee bounces as if it means to go through the floor. “I mean, what would you do? I woke up one day and didn’t remember _anything_ , and there was no one I recognized, and it was either trust what they were telling me or be anxious and paranoid all the time. I didn’t want to do that. I dunno about you, but I couldn’t ever live that way.”

No, he couldn’t have. Zelos is not surprised, and he’s stop believing that he should be.

Zelos pulls the amulet out of his pocket, careful to hold only the chain, and tosses it onto the bed near Lloyd. Then he settles beside it, one leg up on the mattress. “Alright, I get it. Truce. But what _I_ wanna know is, what does all that have to do with Colette restoring everyone’s memory? Hell, wouldn’t that make this easier? Get everyone to have a feelings circlejerk about what all they want?”

Lloyd bites his lower lip. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Yeah, I bet it is.”

“The only reason all this is working is because the people who want to stop us _did_ lose their memories,” Lloyd explains, “and if they got them back…”

“Shit hits the fan?”

“Yeah, a lot of shit.”

Zelos isn’t inclined to be charitable, or gracious, or any other form of halfway decent. But with Lloyd sitting before him all of his reservations are meaningless, and so is any attempt at ignoring the situation.

He exhales sharply. “Fine,” he says. “We’ll just have to find a way around that.”

Lloyd breaks into a grin.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is only one bed

 Morning dawns before Zelos wakes, bathing the world in pink and gold by the time he opens his eyes to the dingy interior of the inn. The room is chilled with the last vestiges of nocturnal mountain air, but Zelos is warmed, pleasantly so, by Lloyd's presence behind him. Lloyd is still soundly asleep, the soft rumble of his breath perceptible only because Zelos listens for it.

It takes him several long moments to remember where they are and why, and when he does, apprehension commands his feelings. He waits for the tension of the last few months to return to his limbs, for restlessness to demand he crawl out of bed head downstairs to find whatever it is he doesn't know he's searching for. Neither happens. Zelos's heartbeat is steady, his thoughts languid and slow. Lying here with Lloyd is familiar in a way his own body is not, and he cannot imagine a single good reason to leave Lloyd's side.

Zelos closes his eyes to the shadows the dawn casts across the inn's floor, willing time to stand still in this moment. Maybe, he thinks, if he goes back to sleep, they won't ever have to wake up.

The sun creeps higher in the sky.

Behind Zelos, the mattress depresses and creaks as Lloyd sits up. There is a moment of hesitation, and then Lloyd's fingers brush against Zelos's bare shoulder, leaving snatches of electricity dancing across his skin.

“Hey,” Lloyd says, clearly _trying_ to whisper, and failing miserably. “You up?”

Zelos has a couple ways he can go about this. He can wake up like a normal person, or he can wake up like Zelos.

He twists his neck and slowly opens his eyes. Lloyd comes into focus, his silhouette framed by sunlight. Without the heavy coat and scarf on it's easy to follow the line of his jaw down his neck, across his collarbone and the sleek definition of his biceps. Zelos lets himself admire the view before turning his attention back to Lloyd's face. He bats his eyelashes. “I sure am now,” he says.

Lloyd's cheeks darken as he blushes. He rolls his eyes, swatting Zelos's shoulder. “Shut up,” he groans.

“I'm impressed I got any sleep at all with a fine specimen like you here.”

“Come on, we gotta get going!”

“Oh, I'll be coming, alright.”

Lloyd leaps out of bed and has his revenge as he drags the blankets with him, leaving Zelos fully exposed to the chill of the room. Zelos hisses and curls up immediately, drowning Lloyd's chuckle in the background.

“Don't laugh,” Zelos protests. “I wasn't meant for this northern wasteland.”

“Well, the northern wasteland wasn't meant for you, either. You'll warm up when you get moving.”

An article of clothing lands on Zelos's head; from the silky texture and light color, he surmises it's his pants. Zelos scowls as he sits up and begins to pull them on. 

* * *

 

Lloyd and Zelos are currently split on what to do next. They've narrowed it down, and further refined it over breakfast, to a couple of options:

First, they destroy the amulet however possible—and Zelos returns to Meltokio and tells Colette that she was mistaken. This doesn't help Colette's friends much, but it does alleviate Lloyd's pathetic puppy-dog gaze, and Zelos isn't in a hurry to remind Lloyd of exactly how he used to care for Colette anyway.

They try this in the courtyard after they finish eating. Zelos's holy fire, which smites alle those whom art evil and melts alle steel forged in heresey, can't touch it. (Lloyd points out that this is possibly due to the amulet not being made of steel.) Neither can Lloyd's swords cleave it, nor the particularly large beasts that inhabit this area of Sylvarant crush it beneath their heft. Short of tossing it in the nearest volcano, which would require a month-long journey to Triet in the south, they are not confident they possess a way to destroy the amulet for good.

Which leaves their second, less appealing option: abandon the mission entirely.

The amulet dangles on its chain between Lloyd's fingers as he squints at it, trying to deduce its secrets with a pointed dwarfen glare alone. “I don't want to just leave it lying around,” he murmurs. Hunched on the steps, the charm is tiny compared to the breadth of his shoulders; barely visible, even. Though it glints in the sunlight, Zelos finds it hard to focus his attention on the necklace rather than on Lloyd's lips as he speaks.

“Why not? S'not like anyone can find it up here. We could chuck it off the cliff,” Zelos suggests.

“Are you really okay with that?” Lloyd turns to Zelos, his brow furrowed in concern. “I know it's more than just you and me Colette's worried about.”

“I thought we had this chat already. Whatever we're missing, it's not worth destroying all the work y'all have done.”

But even as the words leave his mouth, Zelos doubts them. He remembers how somber Mikleo is and how he refuses to speak about his past, save for murmuring unfamiliar names to Colette and, on occasion, retrieving a wretched old tome from his things and sighing.

Maybe it's not worth it to him, but it might be to the others, and they _are_ trusting him, aren't they?

Zelos has got to put a stop to this _helping people_ thing. It only becomes more inconvenient as time goes on.

Lloyd doesn't seem convinced. “I wish there was a way to just... only bring back _some_ memories. And not all of them.”

Zelos perks up.

“Actually,” he says, “there might be a way to do that.”

“Really?”

“Totally.” Zelos stretches his arms out before him. “Say, what d'you know about spirits?”

Lloyd frowns, confused by the sudden change in topics, but he bites his lip as he thinks about it anyway. “Uh, powerful, ancient, sometimes destroy people.”

Zelos reaches out and Lloyd hands the amulet back to him, letting it cluster in the center of his palm. Zelos swipes a gloved thumb across its surface and has the briefest flash of brilliant green, a balcony, a babbling brook, of Lloyd standing nearby with devastation scrawled across his face, one arm outstretched. _Don't touch me_ , he's saying, with a trembling lip. _Don't touch me, you stupid jackass Chosen!_

Zelos chokes on his words.

“Zelos, what is it?” Lloyd asks. “Did you get an idea?”

Zelos looks up at Lloyd who gazes at him with an express gentleness, a concern in striking contrast to the revulsion he wears in Zelos's mind, and Zelos makes a decision. He swallows and takes a breath.

“I got an idea, sure,” Zelos says. “To make sure there are people who don't remember shit.”

Lloyd brightens, and Zelos's heart sinks into his shoes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are definitely not five chapters


End file.
